A New Chance for Happiness
by catgrl106
Summary: A young girl is found after a demon attack. She is the only survior. She also has a dragon. But wait, weren't there only 3 dragons left? has an OC. no pairings as of yet. Story is better that it sounds, I just suck at summeries. Please R&R!
1. Chapter 1

This is my both my first DK fanfic, and my first multichapter fan fic, so please enjoy!

Disclaimer: I own the words, not the folks.

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Their first meeting had been nothing but a coincidental encounter. Of course, she had never been one to believe in coincidences. 

---------_Flash Back-------_

It was another beautiful day, the sun was shining, and the world was quiet. That was, until a group of three young men (though one looked like it could have been a girl) came into view, their loud voices carrying through the forest. At the moment, a young girl by an apple tree looked up from her work of gathering fruit. She watched as the three men came closer, a look of curiosity upon her face.

"Are you three lost?" the child asked in soft voice. The three men looked at her for the first time, since they had not realized that she was there. One of the men, who had long, blonde hair, and looked as though he could have easily passed for a woman, sighed, and then said aloud, "Yes, I believe we are. I don't suppose you could point the way to the nearest city or town?"

"Yes, in fact, if you wait a moment, I will be going back there after I finish picking these apples. Oh, and my name is Ayame. Who are you three?" the child asked, innocently going back to her work. Another of the men, this one had brown hair and a strange scar across his cheek; spoke up this time, "Ohh! Apples! Can I have some? I haven't eaten in at _least_ 3 hours!" the girl, Ayame nodded, and then he continued speaking, "By the way, my name's Thatz, the blonde dude is Rune, and the guy over there with the black hair and red eyes is Rath. We're trying to get back to Dragoon."

"Dragoon? Isn't that… isn't that the capital city? Where the dragon lord lives?" Ayame asked standing up, bringing a large basket of apples with her. The blonde, Rune, nodded, then inquired, politely as usual, "You're done now, right? Do you need any help carrying the basket?" Ayame politely declined, then motioned for them to follow her. She noticed that the young man with black hair, Rath she believed was his name, hadn't spoken at all, just gazed around the woods with a distracted glance.

_--------Back to the Present-------_

It had been three years since that day, and all three of those men, who incidentally were Dragon Knights who worked for the Dragon Lord, had long since forgotten about the encounter. They had much more important things to think about, like the current crisis.

"Another village has been completely destroyed thanks to Nadil's army. There were no survivors in the village itself, and the only thing left near there is a small forest, which our men are currently searching. There is a small bit of hope, though, since our records show that there is one body missing from the wreckage, though that doesn't necessarily mean anything," a young man reported to the Dragon Lord, who was currently pacing if front of him.

"Very well, thank you Tetheus," the Dragon Lord, Lykouleon, said to the Black dragon officer. He then turned to the other three dragon officers as well (as in, he is still talking to Tetheus as well).

"I think it's a waste of time and money to go looking for _one person_ who probably isn't even alive anymore!" said Alfeegi, the White dragon officer.

"But there is still a possibility that they _are_ still alive! And if they are, we have a duty to help them, even if it is just one child!" another spoke aloud. This time it was Ruwalk, the Yellow dragon officer.

"Wait, the person we're looking for is just a child?" the last one asked, a pained look on his face. This one was the Blue Dragon officer, Kaistern. Kaistern was known for having a soft spot for children, which was made obvious by the fact that he could put up with the resident troublemaker, Rath, who was also the Dragon Knight of Fire, complete with his own fire dragon. Rath's other two friends, Rune and Thatz, also had dragons, though Rune had a water dragon, being the Dragon Knight of Water, and Thatz had an earth dragon, being the Dragon Knight of Earth.

"The forest is small, and my men should be done checking by night fall, so there isn't much to discuss on this matter," Tetheus, who also happened to be in charge of the armed forces of the castle. "And yes, Kaistern, the person who we are looking for is, according to our records, a young girl, probably around the age of 10 years by now. I believe her name was Ayame."

All of a sudden, several things happened at once. First, there was a gasp from somewhere in the ceiling. Then the grating of the air system in the ceiling fell, followed by Rath. Also, Tetheus opened the door to the conference room, and Rune and Thatz fell through the door. Everyone glanced at the dragon lord to see his reaction, and to the surprise of some (though not many) he burst into laughter, then went to go help a blushing Rath to his feet.

"In any case, I am assuming by that gasp that you know something of that girl, Rath?" Lykouleon enquired, a look of seriousness back on his face.

"Yeah, about, what, three years ago?" here he looked to the other two knights, who were still an interesting shade of dark pink, "Yeah, three years ago, we got lost trying to get back to Dragoon. We ended up in a forest, where we met a girl who went by that name. She took us back to her village so we could ask for directions," Rath concluded.

At that moment, a large commotion was heard outside, and all of those in the conference room went to find out what had happened.

Right outside the castle, a large number of soldiers were together in a circle, and beyond them were many passersby, trying to find out what had happened. Lykouleon pushed his way past many people until he go up to the front of the circle, where he saw an injured, young girl laying on the ground, with some sort of dark-silverish creature laying on her chest.

"What is going on here and who is that child," he asked the nearest soldier.

"That child is the one we found in the forest, most likely the one missing from the recently destroyed village. We were carrying her in to the infirmary and then we were gong to go give you our report, sir, but while we where walking over here, that creature suddenly crawled out from the kid's pocket or something and took a bite out of Henry's (1) hand, since he was the one closest to it. After that, everyone freaked out and we just… kind of… dropped her. Now were trying to get rid of the creature before it hurts the kid."

Suddenly, Rath popped out of nowhere, scaring the poor soldier away, "Lykouleon, I don't think that creature is going to hurt her. It almost looks as if it's her pet or something. Also, doesn't it look kind of like… kind of like a dragon?" Rath mentioned. Then started walking towards the girl. The creature started to growl, so Rath slowed down, and summoned his fire dragon, which whispered to for a moment before sending it over to the creature, while he continued walking. Everyone stared with baited breath. Fire, which was in fact what Rath had named the dragon, seemed to be talking with the creature, which had lessened its growl, and didn't try to bite Rath when he came near. Instead, it simply buried its claws deeper into the fabric of the girl's shirt, and allowed the girl to be picked up and carried inside, while a few people, namely a few soldiers, the dragon knights, Lykouleon, and the dragon officers, followed behind.

When they got to the infirmary, the chief nurse took one look at the girl, and immediately set a large majority of her staff to getting the girl taken care of. She asked the group following her to please wait outside for the news.

Lykouleon had only gotten a short look at her, but he immediately got a feeling of needing to protect her. She just looked so frail and broken, and he got the feeling that it wasn't just her wounds that gave him that feeling. Also, the appearance of another dragon was something that he was curious about. There were supposed to only be a total of five dragons, two of which were dead, and the remaining three belonged to the three dragon knights. However, he was brought out of his thinking when, three hours later, the chief nurse came out of the surgery ward.

"Under normal circumstances, I would be lying if I said I expected the girl to live with the wounds she has. However, for some reason, she seems to be healing exceptionally quickly, so there is still a chance that she will live," the nurse told the waiting group, then shooed them all off to bed, saying that they could see the girl in the morning.

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(1) I just randomly picked the name Henry, so all the Henry's in the world, don't take offense to the fact that a dragon just almost bit your finger off. Also, the dragon bit him like a dog would bite, it didn't try to eat him or anything.

btw, I am not putting up the next chapter until I get at least one review. After all, that's not so much to ask, right?

Well, there's the first chapter. Please review! Reviews make the world go round!


	2. Chapter 2

A whole plate full of cookies goes to Blytheboo, as they were the only one to submit a review. I really like reviews, so please remember to give me one, 'kay?

Also, sorry about taking so long to post the next chapter, I have almost the whole story thought out, but I have so many different ways that I could do it, it takes me forever to write things down.

And in case you can't tell while reading this chapter, I am in a rather random mood, so it's a bit of a strange chapter.

As always, I don't own the characters or the book.

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As morning came, the Dragon Lord summoned a meeting with the Dragon Knights, for there seemed to be a lot of information missing from what he knew. After his knights had arrived, Lykouleon gazed at the three men and sighed. 

"Alright, I want to know whatever you can tell me about what is going on. How about we start with you, Rath, since you seemed to recognize her yesterday," Lykouleon announced.

"Er, well, it was several years ago, and it wasn't a very big deal at the time," Rath started off, looking rather embarrassed at being put on the spot. "I think it was about three years ago, we were lost as usual, and ended up in some forest. We saw a little kid there, and she showed us how to get back on track." The other two knights nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, she was picking apples… they were really good," Thatz added in a state of blissful happiness. That didn't last very long though.

"How can you manage to remember what food she had with her three years ago, but you can't remember your manners for even one day?!?!?!" Rune demanded, as he repeatedly hit Thatz in the head with a giant hammer.

"Very well, and you believe that the girl found in the forest is the one from three years ago?" Lykouleon asked after watching Rune and Thatz with an amused glance.

"Seems like it, yeah," Rath said, and then got up and skipped to the door. "I'm guessing that we're going to go see how she's doing, right? So let's go!"

The four men left the office and went down to the hospital ward.

Lykouleon walked up to one of the nurses and asked if the girl was awake, to which the nurse replied that she was, and promptly showed them to where she was. When they arrived, the silver creature from before was nowhere to be seen, and the girl was staring out a window, and only looked away from the window once to glance distantly at her new visitors, then looked back at the window.

The men watched her for a moment, until Rath got up and grabbed an apple from a nearby tray. "Want an apple? You like apples, right?" He asked the girl, offering her the apple.

The girl looked at him, surprised, as if she hadn't seen him there before. There was a strange clarity in her eyes, as if she understood more about the world than any girl her age had a need to. She then nodded her head and took the apple, and started to eat it, all the while staring at Rath. "Have… have I met you before? You seem rather… familiar," She finally asked, after she was halfway done with the apple.

"I'm not sure. I think we did, but if we did, it would have been three years ago," Rath replied, glancing to the others for support, but Lykouleon was just studying the girl's reactions, while Rune and Thatz just shrugged their respective shoulders.

Suddenly, the girl's eyes lost their clarity again for a moment, as if she was thinking about something far away. Then, just as suddenly, they were sharp and bright again. "Three years ago? Then that was…but, you're from…I'm in Dragoon?" she asked, looking confused. The four nodded their heads.

"Yes, we found you in a forest near a village that was completely destroyed by Nadil's army. I am guessing your name is Ayame?" Lykouleon said, giving her a sad smile. The girl nodded. "So, Ayame, when you were being brought here, a silver creature appeared by your side and attacked one of the guards. However, it didn't harm anyone else, and just sat on top of you. Do you know what it was?"

Ayame looked thoughtful, then studied Lykouleon. "Hmm, hold on a sec. I know who those three are," here she glanced at the dragon knights, "but I don't know who you are."

"That's true, I forgot to give you my name, my name is Lykouleon, and I'm technically the Dragon Lord," Lykouleon replied with a smile.

"Technically? What does that mean?" Ayame asked. After getting the muttered name 'Alfeegi' as a reply, she sighed and looked up at the ceiling as she whistled a short note, then turned back to Lykouleon as a small silver creature came flying onto her shoulder. "The 'silver thing' was most likely my friend here. She's a dragon, though I don't generally show her to many people, since most people either are scared of her or try to steal her. She's good at hiding, but since I've been traveling for the last two and a half years, she doesn't have to hide much. Her name is Aya."

"Hey Ayame, if you were traveling, why were you back near your village right when the demons attacked, and how did you get hurt so badly?" Rune asked, speaking for the first time.

"I was wondering when you were going to ask about that," Ayame started, her gaze turning sorrowful, "It's all my fault that the village was attacked. Nadil had heard about Aya and had decided to try and capture her, so he sent a few demons after us. Of course, a couple of demons are no match for a dragon, so the demons died. Nadil apparently wasn't happy about that, so he sent a bunch more demons, but we defeated those too. And then he sent a whole army of demons. Now I don't know about you, but generally one kid and a dragon can't take down an entire army of bloodthirsty demons. So, like any scared kid, I ran for it. They still managed to track me down though. I would have died if it hadn't been for Aya and the fact that most of them got distract and went down to eat the villagers and forgot all about me. I hadn't even know I was near the village…"

At this point in the story, Ayame had started crying, and the silver dragon was licking the girl's face, trying to make her feel better. Ayame looked like she was about to go on when the dragon's head suddenly turned to the window. Seeing that, Ayame quickly got out of the bed she was in, almost falling down once, and walked over to a window.

"Oh shoot," Ayame said quietly, "It looks like the demons don't like to give up."

Confused, Lykouleon and Rath walked over to the window and saw several demons in front of the castle. The only odd thing was, they were inside the Dragon Lords barrier.

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The thing with the Demon in the Dragon Lords barrier, for anyone who doesn't know, is that demons can't get in the Dragon Lords barrier, not unless they have dragon blood in them or they have a Light Dragon pendant like Rath and Cesia. 

Please review!!!! Pretty please? With a Cherry on top? I'll give anyone who reviews a cookie!


	3. Author's Note no, I'm not giving up

Hey, I'm sorry that I haven't updated in a while. I somehow managed to completely forget what it was that I had planned to do next. **I'm not giving up on the story**. However, I would defiantly appreciate it if those of you reading this story would give me ideas. When/if (hopefully when) I put up another chapter, I will put it up as another chapter, not as replacing this one, so feel free to send the ideas via review. Also, I am allowing anonymous reviews, so _**please**_ give me your ideas. I will give credit to the people whose ideas I use unless they specifically request that I not do so. Also, there is a chance that I will remember what I had planned. A whole plate of cookies goes to those who review! And, again, sorry for not updating or posting this message early.

**I am still continuing this fic, so please don't give up on me!** thank you:)


	4. Chapter 3

Yes, finally! I have written the next chapter! A huge thanks to Amekoryuu and animesyndrome (who also gave me an idea or two) , whose reviews reminded me to keep working on this chapter.

Quite obviously, I don't own Dragon Knights or else there would be more demons for Rath to kill, and people would stop trying to kill him all the time.

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A large uproar was heard throughout the castle. A large group of demons had just been spotted within the Dragon Lords barrier, and many dragon fighters were afraid that they were about to have another demon like Bierrez on their hands. Of course, some fighters were absolutely ecstatic about it. Actually, there was really only one, and at the current moment, his fellow fighters were begging him to wait for them before he ran off to fight the demons.

"But Rune! I wanna fight the demons! They're right outside! You can't just not let me kill them!" Rath whined, begging to kill the demons much like a child would beg for dessert.

"Just hold on a minute and let the rest of us get ready! There are plenty of demons to fight, so I'm sure you can simply _**wait for one minute!!**_" Rune said, glaring at Rath for his annoying behavior. The tension of the moment was broken when a quiet giggle was heard from the bed, where Ayame had resumed resting. All heads turned to the quiet girl, who blushed and quickly pretended to be asleep, even though it was quite obvious she wasn't. 

Finally, after what seemed like hours to poor Rath, but was really only about two minutes, Thatz and Rune were ready to fight and the threesome, Lykouleon having left earlier to try to lessen the commotion within the building, left the room to get outside and fight the demons, Rath leading the other two and practically skipping with delight. If anyone had come by, they would have seen Ayame quietly get back out of bed and climb back over to the window, as if she was waiting to see what would happen.

Once outside, Rath had immediately begun trying to hack the demons to pieces, while Rune and Thatz tried to defeat them in a slightly more dignified manor that mainly just meant using their swords as actually swords, instead of acting as if they could have possibly forgotten all of the swords train that Tetheus had more or less literally beaten into their heads. Which is of course to say that Rath was basically using his sword like a sharp club. Something odd seemed to be happening with the demons, though. The three dragon nights could defeat the demons easily enough, but right after they took their eyes off the demon, it disappeared, and another demon appeared right about where the dead on was. Also, the attacks the demons were using were unusually weak.

"Grr, where do these demons keep coming from, it's like they keep coming back to life!" Thatz growled, frustrated that with all his hard work, nothing was getting done.

"Hey, look on the bright side, this way, we never run out of demons!" replied a very happy Rath. He was actually whistling while he beat the demons to a bloody pulp.

"Only you would be happy about that Rath," Rune said, sighing, "In any case, we've been going at it for almost an hour and a half, and I'm starting to get a bit worn out. I think we mi-" 

All of a sudden, Rune was interrupted by a short, girly scream and a loud thump into a bush near the wall of the castle. A minute later, as well as a good deal of rustling, Ayame stepped out of the bush, acting very dignified and like she hadn't just fallen a floor or two, only to land in a bush in the middle of a bloody carnage scene. 

"Um, what are you doing here?" Rune asked, barely managing to kill the demon that had leapt in front of him while he was distracted.

"Well, I kinda felt the need to tell you that those aren't demons, but if you want, I can leave again," Ayame offered, acting all innocent. 

"What do you mean these aren't demons? Also, I was kind of referring to the fact that you just scaled the castle walls, even though you're supposed to be quite injured," Rune stated very calmly, going back to killing the demons.

"Well, those 'demons' are plants with a shadow spell on them, allowing them to move and keep coming back to life. If you break the spell, they'll probably just become a pile of splinters."

"Okay, but how do you break a shadow spell? I didn't even know that there _was_ shadow magic," Thatz asked, rather grumpy about the fact that he had just spent an hour and a half hacking up plants instead of stealing food and jewels, though preferably food.

"Well, I read in a book that spirit magic and shadow magic are two sides of the same coin, so I can give it a shot. Err, if you want me to. I suppose that if you looked for the right spell, you could probably find a way to get rid of it with light magic. That would probably take a while though," Ayame replied.

"Well, we don't really have a lot of time, so go ahead and take your best shot," Rune said, moving out of the way and backing up a good distance. The other three people did the same. Ayame then closed her eyes and stood still for a moment before a light shimmering seemed to emanate from around the demons, which were still coming after the group, though they were suddenly much slower now. The light grew brighter and brighter until it gave a sudden flash, and the demons were replace with several large piles of misshapen bits of wood. It just so happened that Lykouleon chose that exact moment to appear in the courtyard as well, wondering why it was taking his prized dragon knights so long to get rid of the demons.

"Hmm, do I want to know why Ayame is down here and why there is a bunch of wood all over here?" Lykouleon asked, looking rather amused.

"I climbed down the wall because I figured that they might want to know that the demons weren't really demons," Ayame replied, still using what Lykouleon had started to suspect was a mask of innocent happiness. 

"You climbed down the wall? In your condition? How did you manage to not rip open all your stitches?" Lykouleon inquired, one eyebrow raised.

Ayame looked at him blankly before looking down at the bandages covering her body beneath the outfit she was currently wearing. "Oh yeah, I was hurt pretty bad, huh? I guess I forgot…" was all she was able to say before she passed out, light blots of red appearing through her shirt, getting darker by the minute.

"I'll take her back up to her room," Rath said, putting his sword away and scooping Ayame up into his arms, nearly dropping her when Aya, Ayame's dragon suddenly appeared there as well. "Huh, I guess that's what the soldier meant when he said that 'a creature suddenly crawled out from the kid's pocket or something', though I'm guessing that it was more of a 'or something,'" Rath muttered to himself, transporting the girl and dragon back into the hospital wing, while Rune and Thatz were left to explain to Lykouleon exactly what all had happened.

Later that night, Lykouleon went back to the hospital wing one last time to check on Ayame. The head nurse noticed him and motioned for him to come closer to her.

"Lord Lykouleon, I was doing some blood tests on the new girl in this wing, and I feel that I must warn you. I don't know what that girl is, but she certainly isn't a dragon, human, demon, or a fairy. If I had to guess, I'd say that she was actually some kind of mix between a dragon and a demon, though I'm not sure if that's actually possible," the nurse told Lykouleon. She then said a quick goodnight and hurried to continue cleaning up for the night. Lykouleon mulled over the information he had collected about the girl throughout the day, and made up his mind once and for all that he was going to trust this strange girl. After all, it was the least he could do for the child.

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Yeah, so, there's the chapter. I'm trying to make it slightly less awkward sounding than the last chapter. To tell the truth, I'm still not sure where I'm going with this, but I felt I owe you readers at least one chapter. I hope you liked it! I thrive on reviews, the more you review, the more likely I am to remember to actually update this story.

Until next time, then!


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